Is Platform as a Service (PaaS) Business Smart?

The Platform as a Service, or PaaS, style of doing business means providing all the essentials of building a cloud service. In this model, the consumer creates the software used for the platform, and gets to determine how it will be deployed. Meanwhile, the Managed Services Provider offers the networks, servers, storage, and other platform essentials. The cloud computing boom makes this potentially profitable, but is it something that is smart to get involved in long term?

The Consumer’s Perspective on PaaS

There are certain benefits to PaaS from the consumer’s perspective that make it quite desirable. The Managed Services provide automatic updates to the infrastructure, which takes some work off the shoulders of your IT department. Using a single vendor for all essential cloud services can decrease your overall costs as well. However, it is worth noting that by giving up your infrastructure to another business, you are locking yourself in to the way that business does things. That means you have limits on what changes and upgrades you can make. It also means that there is a degree of inflexibility when it comes to scaling, so if your business grows faster than expected, you may experience some problems.

The Provider’s Perspective on Paas

On the other side of things, PaaS can be quite lucrative for managed service providers, although there are still pros and cons. Getting into the business requires a significant investment on the part of the provider, although the costs are quickly recovered as clients roll in with their regular payments for these services. The need for reliable service also means that a high investment in terms of tech support and maintenance is needed. The consumer wants a service that requires as little maintenance on their end as possible, which means that any interruption in service needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible. Failure to respond quickly can cost customers and can hurt a person’s business as well.

Is Paas Worth the Investment?

So is going to a PaaS business model a smart way to go? It can be if you are willing to take a couple of important steps to protect yourself. From a consumer standpoint, you need to keep in mind that while you will have control over a large portion of your business, you will be relying on another company for the essential hardware and storage. Even if you have a good relationship with a provider, you should make sure that you have a good backup plan in place should something unexpected occur. An outage with your provider, a malignant intrusion, or many other factors can harm your business if you aren’t careful. If you do everything right on your end, you can protect yourself quite well.

If you are considering moving to PaaS, you should make sure that you have a solid relationship with your potential provider. Do all your research and plan thoroughly for a way to back up your data. If you take the proper precautions and have realistic expectations of the limitations of the system, this can be a smart move indeed.

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